Pip Rau obituary

Pip Rau in her Islington shop in 1988. Photograph: Richard Waite

My birth mother, Doris Rau, known as Pip, who has died aged 86, was a dealer in central Asian antique textiles and costumes.

For 40 years she ran a shop called Rau in Islington, north London, featuring stock that came from Uzbekistan, northern Pakistan and above all Afghanistan, a country she adored and which for many years she visited annually.